Which makes me laugh because I can just hear Brad Pitt in my mind, "Gratzi."
I found the mountains on the way to Pompeii.
Good thing, too, because I would have been headed in the wrong direction if I hadn't seen them.
I love the mountains.
I don't think I will ever go anywhere that will take over my fascination and adoration for a set of mountains.
Next to man, furry things, dancing, and trains, mountains amaze and entertain me to a never ending extent.
On that note, italian trains are 20x's more comfortable than Indian trains, the only thing I have to compare them to.
I've only been on IC (intercity trains), but I mean, each person has their own individual seat with a headrest and humongo windows on both sides to look out of. There are no transvestites, hawkers, beggar children, an entire family of 8 in your booth...
In fact, Italian trains are infinitely more boring than Indian trains for these reasons.
Except for all of the ugly feet.
I've yet to see pretty toes on any train in my entire life thus far.
This is more surprising in Italy than in India.
But comfiness is the price you pay in Europe.
Which is alot.
I traveled for 3 hours today - cost me 20 euros (approx. $25) as opposed to traveling 16 hours to Mumbai which cost, if I remember correctly, like rs. 800 ($16) which at the time, blew me away. Where I then survived, because I had enough money left over to buy myself food and shelter.
hm...
One thing that has yet to change - having to pay for your bodily functions. Which seriously sucks when you have to pee really badly, you can't find your change purse, you are lugging around luggage (traveling solo means you can't leave it with a friend) and the way into the bathroom requires you to push one of those bladder high bars around. I believe these are called turnstiles?
I declare war on these monstrosities.
Talk about torture.
That is just Italy's way of begging for people to start using the world as its bathroom.
What has changed - the level of cleanliness and bathroom standards.
Thanks, Europe, for always having a toilet and toilet paper.
You didn't provide me with a lifesaver, but they're pretty nice to have around.
Anyways, who was the deranged person who first thought that traveling around Europe after graduating from college was a smart thing?
There is absolutely no worst time to begin traveling and seeing the world and being financially strapped than when you are stuck between paying off student loans and having a real job with a real income.
But let's get this straight - this not so ground breaking revelation will not stop me.
What might stop me: my lack of pre-travel research.
So far, I've survived. I've yet to travel with any sort of travel guide or book.
I mean, I was in Rome for a day and just happened to walk up on the President's House and the Trevi Fountain. I didn't know.
I was hoping my parents would pick one up... (hinthint)
this place needs one, for sure.
So right. I am in Italy. I was in Rome. I took a train down the Amalfi Coast of Italy. I stood in Naples but got scared of all the scary things people say about Naples and went back in the train station.
I only had 45 minutes anyhow.
I'm now in Pompeii.
An attempt at specificity:
I am sitting on a roof overlooking the Pompeii scavi (ruins) listening to fireworks go off in the distance and listening to Jai Ho on my computer.
Until now, these places (mainly Rome and Pompeii) didn't exist. Kinda like Idaho, or Atlantis.
Myths.
When I was younger, I wanted to be a historian. I thought I would give tours in a museum or suffink.
When I was younger, I read a lot (A LOT) of books. A great number of them pertained to Greek/Roman mythology and natural disasters and life on the prairie and English royalty and pagan rituals.
Today, I read and looked at 3 of those things.
(I'm not going into detail about them because I looked at them from the gates - tomorrow is the big day!)
I remember being younger and stealing someone's book that were in my house on Pompeii, the great fire/earthquake of San Francisco, the Oregon Trail, the Dust Bowl, Egyptian pyramids, the Bubonic Plague, Mexican adobes, and then, oddly enough, Arabian Nights.
Which I don't think is historically significant for any reason outside of literature.
The point - I love this. Not just because it's cool, although it is. It is freaking awesome!
But I have an invested interest. This isn't just let's go look at the Pompeii ruins because they are world famous.
This takes me back. I can still see those early imagined images of what I thought the world looked like back then.
It reminds me of what is possible to achieve.
There was absolutely nothing more I desired than getting out of where I was.
Who thought I would be looking at the very things that I very seriously dreamed about seeing?
That I read about and thought about everyday?
I used to imagine these - now I am seeing them with my own two eyes and am just... I can't find a better term than "blown away" but that is what it is.
I am truly blown away by the sheer amazingness of everything the world has in it.
I mean, imagine growing up in the shadow of a volcano, then dying underneath all of the ask while performing paganish rituals to ward off the evil (in Pompeii, this sign was a phallic symbol...) only for people from THE FUTURE come and walk all over your home, up and down your walkway, peer into your doorways, listening to audio tapes of what has been deemed as the most important aspect of your community and way of life...
wow.
To end, sorry about the paragraphs. I'll cut up the space between them when I get some pics onto my computer.
And... some very important words I have learned out of survival:
treno = train
carrozza = car
posti = seat
ciao = hello/goodbye
Before I get ahead of myself, the world can also be a horrible horrible place.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-10799539
